


They Live Inside Us

by glassclosetcastiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Big Brother Dean Winchester, Brother Feels, Christmas Eve, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Protective Dean Winchester, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-24 15:46:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3774376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glassclosetcastiel/pseuds/glassclosetcastiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m not a little kid anymore, Dean,” Sam insists, as if reading Dean’s thoughts. He waits patiently for Dean to reply, eyes trained on his brother’s face. </p><p>Eventually, Dean comes to a decision. He sits up and swings his legs over the edge of his bed so he can face Sam head-on. “Okay. I’ll tell you. But I swear, if you ever tell Dad I told you any of this, I will end you.”</p><p>Sam leans forward excitedly, mirroring Dean’s position on the opposite bed. “Promise,” he vows.</p><p>“Well, the first thing you have to know is we have the coolest dad in the world,” Dean tells Sam. “He’s a superhero.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Live Inside Us

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize in advance.
> 
> Thank you to Becca, Jess, Izzy and Helen for beta-ing and helping out with the ending. You make my work better.

_Christmas Eve, 1987_

“I’m hungry,” Sammy says.

Dean eyes him over his comic book. “What else is new?” he mutters, chewing a little on the inside of his cheek. They’re out of food- have been all day- but Dean’s been trying to distract Sammy with Bugs Bunny cartoons so he won’t notice.

“I want Lucky Charms,” Sammy says, scooting his butt to the end of the twin bed to get closer to Dean. His little feet kick against the lumpy grey bedspread and the hard mattress underneath.

“You finished the Lucky Charms two days ago,” Dean reminds him, trying and failing to keep his place on the page, the colors and lines of Batman blurring into a black and yellow fog. He flicks his eyes up over the page to see his little brother pouting. 

“You’ll live,” he says, putting the comic face-down on the table next to him. Sammy just kicks his feet harder, impatiently. Dean tries a different tactic.

“You know, tomorrow’s Christmas. You think Santa’s gonna give you any presents if you’re whining?”

Sam stops his kicking and seems to consider this. “Why don’t you go to sleep, Sammy? Sooner you go to sleep, the sooner it’ll be Christmas,” Dean reasons, forcing a smile.

He picks the comic back up and spends a moment or two pretending to focus on Batman, watching in the periphery for signs that Sam will lose interest in his hunger or his cartoons and get to sleep.

“Where’s Daddy?” Sam asks instead, and Dean clenches his eyes shut for a split second, pulling the book up a fraction of an inch to cover his face.

“Go to bed, Sam,” he says, and turns the TV off.

\---

_Christmas Eve, 1988_

“Dean?” 

Dean doesn’t move his eyes from the screen. It’s some old movie in black and white- something about a man who wants to die, but an angel shows him how terrible life would be without him. It’s kind of boring, but Dean’s too lazy to get up and turn the channel. “What, Sammy?”

“Where’s Daddy?” Sam asks, like it’s the first time this week he’s noticed Dad’s gone. Maybe it is, who knows. He’s only five. Dean sighs and rolls up from his reclining position, goes to flip the TV to channel 8. Tom is chasing Jerry around in a clean white kitchen.

“He’ll be back tomorrow,” Dean assures him, going around the side of the bed to crouch at the mini fridge on the floor. He picks out the last two juice boxes, shoving a straw into one and handing it to Sammy. Sam takes the juice without comment and sucks on the straw blankly, successfully distracted by the cartoon.

Dean looks at the last juice box in his hand, and then at the door to the motel room. The messy, muddy footprints leading from the door to the bathroom, long since dried to a dull greyish-brown.The empty bottles crowding the too-small trash can next to the TV. He ignores the sound his stomach makes when he puts the drink back in the fridge.

\---

_Christmas Eve, 1990_

“Hey, Dean?” Sam asks, hand a blur of motion as he scribbles in the Sesame Street coloring book laid out on the floor in front of him. The book keeps sliding on the shag carpet, but Sam is patient. It’s driving Dean crazy watching him shift the book back into place every few minutes.

“What?” he asks, mouth full of Slim Jim.

“Where’s-”

“I swear to god, Sammy,” Dean cuts him off, sitting up straight in his seat, “if you ask me where Dad is I’m gonna punch you right in the face.”

Sam, to his credit, doesn’t seem all that perturbed by the threat. He continues his progress, giving Oscar the Grouch just the right shade of green fur. “I wasn’t gonna ask that,” he says, and Dean rolls his eyes, relaxing back into the vinyl kitchenette chair.

“Sure you weren’t.”

“I mean,” Sam says, choosing a slightly darker green for shading, and Dean pretends not to be so invested in his progress. “He’s coming back tomorrow, right? For Christmas?”

Dean doesn’t say anything, balling up the plastic beef jerky wrapper and tossing it aside. It lands next to an empty Kraft mac and cheese box.

“Where does he go?” Sam asks, a minute later.

Dean scowls into his lap. “I’ll tell you someday,” he mutters, probably too quiet for Sam to hear.

\---

_Christmas Eve, 1991_

“Seriously, Dean,” Sam sighs, sitting up with his arms crossed. He’d been reading comic books for hours, but Dean guesses he can’t be distracted forever. Not anymore.

“What,” Dean asks, pretending not to remember their earlier conversation. The same one they end up having every year.

“Tell me where Dad is.” 

It kind of breaks Dean’s heart that Sam has stopped calling their father “daddy,” but he’s not a baby anymore. He’s an eight-year-old. Eight going on twenty, Dean thinks.

“I can’t tell you,” he says, grabbing at Sam’s discarded comic book. Sam snatches it and hides it behind his back.

“Why not?”

“I just... can’t, okay?” Dean hedges, eyes pleading. He looks into Sam’s scowling face. Tries to see his little brother as he was last year- still coloring, still distracted by cartoons. Never noticing how soon they ran out of food. Never asking how Dean got the money to buy more.

“I’m not a little kid anymore, Dean,” Sam insists, as if reading Dean’s thoughts. He waits patiently for Dean to reply, eyes trained on his brother’s face. 

Eventually, Dean comes to a decision. He sits up and swings his legs over the edge of his bed so he can face Sam head-on. “Okay. I’ll tell you. But I swear, if you ever tell Dad I told you any of this, I will end you.”

Sam leans forward excitedly, mirroring Dean’s position on the opposite bed. “Promise,” he vows.

“Well, the first thing you have to know is we have the coolest dad in the world,” Dean tells Sam. “He’s a superhero.”

Sam looks skeptical when he asks, “He is?”

Dean widens his eyes in earnest. “Yeah.” He rubs the back of his neck, taking an uncertain breath before diving in. “Monsters are real. Dad fights them. He’s fighting them right now.” He doesn’t miss the flurry of emotions that pass over Sam’s features: shock, then fear, then disbelief.

“But Dad said the monsters under my bed weren’t real,” Sam says, quietly, and Dean follows his gaze to the floor at the foot of the bed, watches as Sam picks his skinny legs up and folds them under him, criss-cross applesauce.

“That’s ’cause he'd already checked under there,” Dean reasons. “But yeah, they’re real. Almost everything’s real.”

“Is Santa real?” Sam asks, hazel eyes full of wonder. 

Dean feels an ache in his chest, but he answers honestly. “No.”

Sam seems to consider all of this. After a moment, he looks back up at Dean, and his face is etched in worry. “If monsters are real, then they could get us. They could get me.”

Dean inches forward on the bed, getting as close to his brother as he can. “Dad’s not gonna let them get you,” he tells Sam, fighting back the ugly clawing sensation in his throat at the words.

“But what if they get him?” Sam asks, and Dean shakes his head.

“They aren’t gonna get Dad. Dad’s, like, the best.” They're both silent for a moment, Dean's eyes unconsciously flitting to the door and back.

“Is that what happened to Mom?” Sam asks, softly. “Did monsters get her?” 

Dean’s heart clenches painfully. “It’s complicated, Sam,” he replies, suddenly wanting the conversation to end.

"If they got Mom, they can get Dad," Sam says, his brow furrowed in concern, "and if they get Dad, they can get us."

Dean gets up from his bed and pivots to sit next to Sam. He thinks about putting his arm around his little brother's shoulders, but hesitates. "It’s not like that, okay?"

He wonders, briefly, if telling Sam all of this has done more harm than good. "Dad’s fine. We’re fine. Trust me." 

Seeing the persistent worried look on his brother's face, Dean shifts closer and pulls Sam into his side. He frowns down at the crown of his little brother’s head. "You okay?" he asks, squeezing Sam’s shoulder. 

"Yeah." Sam's voice is muffled in the fabric of Dean's shirt.

Dean takes a deep, slow breath, quietly enough so that Sam won't hear the way it cracks on the exhale. "Hey," he says, clearing his throat and giving Sam another tiny squeeze, "Dad’s gonna be here for Christmas. Just like he always is."

Sam is quiet for a beat too long, and Dean bites at a spot inside his cheek that's always worn raw by his teeth. After a minute, Sam leans away and settles down into the mattress. "I just want to go to sleep, okay?" he says, curling onto his side in the fetal position.

"Yeah, okay," Dean replies. He can't see Sam's face, but he can feel the damp patch on his shoulder. He wonders when Sammy decided he was too old to cry in front of him. 

He thinks Sam must have learned it from him.

Dean stays in place at the edge of the old mattress, watching as Sam's shoulders shake. "It’ll all be better when you wake up," he vows, casting his eyes around the sparse motel room. "You’ll see.”

Dean waits until Sam stills, his ragged sobs evening out into slow breaths, before pulling the comforter back from the left side of the bed and tucking it around his brother's small frame. He gets up from the bed, moving quietly, and pads carefully out the motel room door, checking once over his shoulder to ensure that Sam is still asleep.

The December air nips at his ears and nose, but he can't risk going back inside to retrieve a hat or scarf. Instead, he pops the collar of his flannel shirt and burrows his hands in his pockets as he walks. It only takes about 10 minutes for him to spot the distinctive shape of his father's car, parked haphazardly in a spot right outside the door to a bar just down the road from the motel. 

Dean pushes inside, ignoring the sign on the door that declares that people under 18 aren't permitted inside. The door tinkles with the sound of sleigh bells, and he notices a sprig of plastic mistletoe taped to the ceiling just above the entrance. "Blue Christmas" filters through an old jukebox in the corner. Dean recognizes it. It's his father's favorite Christmas song.

John Winchester is alone, slumped over the bar with his eyes shut. He doesn't notice when Dean reaches into his coat pocket and takes the keys. A woman stops Dean on his way out the door with a half-hearted, "Hey, you can't be in here. Where's your Momma?" He ignores her, stepping outside into the cold.

Dean opens the trunk of the Impala, and although he's unsurprised to find it empty, he'd hoped briefly that there might be something there. Anything to suggest that his father had remembered it was Christmas. 

He starts the car and pulls it onto a residential street nearby, and checks a few windows before pulling out his handmade lockpick. The house is warm and bright but small, and blessedly unoccupied. There's a modest stack of gifts beneath the tree. Dean takes two of them and pauses in front of the fireplace, brushing his fingers over the soft velvet of the four stockings pinned there. He wonders, briefly, if they could have had this if his mom had survived the fire. 

When Dean gets back to the safety of the Impala, he finds a pen and writes out "SAMMY" in big, bold letters on each package, mimicking his father's hand as best he can. He thinks Sam's probably still naïve enough to believe that much. Just like he believed Dean's story about the monsters.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a Stephen King quote: "Monsters are real. Ghosts are real. They live inside us, and sometimes they win."
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr](http://Glassclosetcastiel.tumblr.com) and yell at me for this.


End file.
